Spooky amateur photo raises new questions about life after death

That has been the question gnawing at an amateur photographer who uploaded some pictures she took of a landscape photograph framed in an old window, only to be stunned to discover what looks like the ghost of a small boy staring back at her.

"I said 'Oh my God, what is that?"' the photographer, who wishes to remain anonymous, said.

But what really raised the hairs on the back of her neck was the realisation the old window she used for the frame was from a boarding school in western NSW that dates back to 1886.

She took the original landscape shot at the Old Errowanbang Historic Wool Shed, west of Blayney, before printing and framing it in a window her husband, a builder, sourced from a boarding school where he worked.

The woman took the framed artwork out to her back yard to get some photographs with the view of selling the frame online as an artwork.

She took several pictures, mostly from the same angle, but the ghostly figure that looks as if it's riding on the back of the dilapidated horse-drawn carriage only appeared in one frame. "I waited for the clouds to come over so there was no reflection because it was (framed) behind the original glass of the window," she said.

The photographer declined to be named for fear of being accused of trying to use the eerie photo to court publicity and help sell her artwork. "I don't mind if my family thinks I'm crazy but I don't want the world to know," she said yesterday.

Despite being a sceptic to all things paranormal, the woman said the photo later strangely left her with a sense of "calm".

She took the unexplained picture on a small Lumix digital camera and maintains it has not been doctored or manipulated in any way.

"I wouldn't even know how to put something in a photo," she said.

"It's got to be a reflection but it's just weird. I think it's a reflection, but how romantic would it be if it was something other than that?

"But it's an amazing reflection if it is."

The window frame she used was originally from a private boarding school for boys, which first opened in 1886 and was later expanded in 1893 before it was taken over by the Methodist Church in 1925.